We posted about the dangers of the Large Hadron Collider before (how dangerous? Like opening a tiny blackhole on Earth).
Now, some guys are suing CERN to stop the project:
The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.
But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.
Link - Thanks Xander!
If it does create a mini blackhole and we're all doomed then I'm going out like I've always wanted to. Standing on the roof of my apartment playing the song on a boombox over my head "It's The End of the World" by Great Big Sea while wearing a red bathrobe fluttering in the wind.
Can you tell I've thought this out a lot? ;)
It's "Earth" not The Earth. Think "the Mars, The Venus, etc...." We are not the center of the universe.
thank you very much and goodnight!
Oh wait, that's not going to happen and this whole thing is a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorist b.s. *sigh*
By the way, "conspiracy" implies that the scientists behind CERN got together, decided to create this thing which could cause planet-swallowing black holes, then lied to the scientific and world community by telling them that there was only the tiniest chance of these things happening. Which is not the case. No one (or at least not the guy suing them) is saying that. So no conspiracy theory,
The paranoia comes in when the rest of us think, "Hey, no matter how small the chance of a black hole developing- that chance is too big for my comfort." And I sympathize with that. Even if the chance is less than 1/1000%, I don't want anyone, especially not a complete stranger, risking my life. And I don't care how goddamn small the risk is, thanks.
IF this guy has actually done the math himself, and is a physicist, I am all for hearing him. But if he has no understanding of what it one way or the other (like 99% of humanity)??
PS: What can we expect from the LHC:?
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/category/this-conference-life/aps-april-2008/
I can understand the anxieties attached to the unknown, but this whole mini black holes getting out of control is really rather silly. I'm not a physicist myself, but I am in constant contact with them, including a few at CERN, and I feel very confident in their assurance that this should not be a major concern to anyone (and probably shouldn't be a minor one either).
BTW, how big will the black hole be? Proton size? Quark size? How many atoms can it suck in per sec? There are like googol atoms on Earth? How long is it gonna take to destroy Earth?
Phil Plait over at www.badastronomy.com wrote a great article on the subject. I would link it but it seems to be down at the mo.
Personally, I'm really excited about this experiment. We could discover all sorts of stuff about the way the universe is put together, including finding the Higgs-Boson particle. The theorised particle (or field, or force) which gives every particle in the universe mass! Very cool.
Though I am convinced that there is no risk to us as the emitters at CERN simply aren't big enough (as I understand it) to produce a black hole big enough to do any damage.
Are you carbon neutral? Do you try to reduce, reuse and recycle?
If you answered no to any of the above you are quite the hypocrite.
I for one, welcome our black hole overlords.
But seriously, even if they screw up and we all die, it would happen so fast we probably wouldn´t notice. :P
But what is "so fast" on the edge of or past an event horizon? LOL.
Well, it could be like those who feared the first chain reaction reactor up in Chicago during WWII. But scientists at CERN have said the black holes are possible (even though the chance of them growing is relatively small, it's still possible). It's so funny how people complain we are destroying the planet with carbon emissions, but they don't mind the possibility of destroying it with black holes. Such inconsistant reasoning for those who claim to be so "scientific." Sure hope Stephen Hawkings is right that the black holes will harmlessly dissipate.
The idea that people with no training and familiarity with the phenomena they're talking about getting so up-in-arms about these minute possibilities that not only do they sue what could be one of the most important scientific experiments in human history but they go around trying to scare the rest of the public into agreeing with them is baffling to me.
I'd like to sit down and talk to some of the people that promote this kind of alarmist anti-intellectualism to try and understand their perspective, but I'm not sure I could withhold the urge to throttle them.
Seriously, i know some people who are already made out of 'strange matter'. Ok, perhaps I am one of those people.
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What does scare the living crap out of me is the fact that we have never dealt with conditions similiar to these... after all, the heat generated will be 100 00 times hotter than the core of the sun... even at temperatures close to 1.9 degrees Kelvin, (which is how much this unit will be cooled)... I don't think we can honestly say that it's "safe" to create these conditions. I am all for scientific progress, but I'm sure that's the same way Einstein felt when he split the Atom the first time... but then again, all that did was cause devastation on a global scale (and give us a whole new range of weapons and other uncontrollable conditions to be afraid of)...
Just a thought...
However, cosmic rays travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, while collider particles smash head on and can be captured by Earths gravity. Einsteins relativity theory predicts that micro black holes will not decay but instead only grow, and Hawking Radiation contradicts relativity, is unproven and is credibly disputed by at least 3 peer reviewed studies.
The LHC Safety Assessment Group has been trying for months to prove safety without success. However science may still be a few years away from being able to prove safety or not.
Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler, Theorist Dr. Raj Baldev and others are warning of a very real, very possible, very present danger to the planet from the Large Hadron Collider.
If this experiment is so safe, why arent CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider?
Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of minimal risk. (Statisticians generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%).
If we delay for a safety study, some scientists at CERN may not be the first to discover some new science, and some Nobel prizes may be at stake.
But which would more wise, conduct a full and independent adversarial safety study first, or just turn it on now and discover science as quickly as humanly possible?
JTankers
LHCConcerns.com
http://www.petitiononline.com/stopLHC/petition.html
We must do something to stop this, we have the right to say no! I love my planet, I don’t want to take a risk we are not sure of just for our own curiosity!
I love science, I’m not one of those people who doesn’t believe in science or anything, but I don’t agree with putting our planet at risk this way and messing with nature….we never know the consequences.
Micro black holes are theoretical, so why is everyone scared of them?
For security reason I suggest to the civilians in the location of this machine to leave this place at time of experiment, and the people who do this experiments to warn those people before machine start to go on full power - for them to pray!
And this will never happen, because its stupid as a fact... Live such long time by creating such long history of human race and to reach the final step its destroying of all(except of correcting), for Nova World!??? I think God have a lot of places in his\she's hands to create New Worlds, or you think we dont like them because a lot of p0rn in internet!? OK... For example, the God is hate the p0rno, but why he is create them?
K.O. Have Nice Day, France and Switzerland! ;-)